Confused about that LSI card? Join the crowd ...

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wpirobotbuilder

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They all work fine if they work fine, otherwise they don't. I know that sounds bad, but it is the reality. Do note that recent FreeNAS versions include sas2flash as a CLI utility.
Is the utility meant to be used on a card with no drives attached?
 

Ericloewe

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Is the utility meant to be used on a card with no drives attached?
I believe at least some cards will not power up if they detect no drives attached. I hope the utility is smart enough to work with cards that are in this state.

Ninja'd by our Resident Grinch.
 

wpirobotbuilder

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Sure. Doesn't matter.
Another question, according to this article sas2flash cannot convert between IR and IT mode, only sas2flsh can. Do you know if this is actually the case?

Or does it mean that, to convert from IR to IT with sas2flash, you first must erase the existing firmware and install the new version, rather than doing an in-place upgrade?

The article appears to be an LSI KB article.
 

jgreco

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That's an interesting question and oddly timed, as I've never used the UNIX tool to do that, and I've actually got a machine on the bench right now where I'm aiming to convert IT to IR. Haven't done it yet. Holiday weekend and all. I had been planning to try the FreeNAS tool anyways.
 

BigDave

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This is from some notes I found way back when I flashed my card, thought it might help...
The DOS version of sas2flsh requires that the motherboard support the BIOS32 service directory feature. If the BIOS32 service directory feature isn't supported, when DOS is booted and sas2flsh.exe is run, an error message "ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program." will be displayed. You can also use the UEFI version of sas2flsh (sas2flash.efi) if your board supports UEFI.
The BIOS32 service directory support might be available with a BIOS update.
When changing to IR from IT or to IT from IR, a firmware erase must first take place.
 

wpirobotbuilder

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That's an interesting question and oddly timed, as I've never used the UNIX tool to do that, and I've actually got a machine on the bench right now where I'm aiming to convert IT to IR. Haven't done it yet. Holiday weekend and all. I had been planning to try the FreeNAS tool anyways.
Let us know how it goes. It seems a lot easier than having to deal with creating a DOS bootup disk.
 

Ericloewe

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Let us know how it goes. It seems a lot easier than having to deal with creating a DOS bootup disk.

It's not too bad. You can use FreeDOS (be sure to get a LiveCD/USB with as little as possible, or else this kind of low-level stuff might not work), you just have to include DOS4GW (like you would on real MS-DOS), because LSI couldn't be bothered to write a flashing tool that fit within 640K of RAM.
 

frishi

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This is from some notes I found way back when I flashed my card, thought it might help...
The DOS version of sas2flsh requires that the motherboard support the BIOS32 service directory feature. If the BIOS32 service directory feature isn't supported, when DOS is booted and sas2flsh.exe is run, an error message "ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program." will be displayed. You can also use the UEFI version of sas2flsh (sas2flash.efi) if your board supports UEFI.
The BIOS32 service directory support might be available with a BIOS update.
When changing to IR from IT or to IT from IR, a firmware erase must first take place.

I can confirm this. I flashed both my M1015s in UEFI mode.
I don't know if I am allowed to post links to other sites, but I found a tutorial site that covers the process to run the UEFI version of sas2flash.
It is nothing complicated and just involves dropping into the built-in shell and mounting your USB drive.

I flashed both my cards with this process. I did get the "firmware driver is v16 does not support built-in driver v15" warning. I had to download v16 and re-flash. Again, nothing complicated.
 

jgreco

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You are always welcome to post useful links, and if anyone ever has problems with that, let me know and we'll make it work out somehow.
 

ron_swanson

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I have a x10sl7-f board and need help with the integrated HBA. I booted in to EFI and tried running the commands in the
SMC2308T.nsh file. Listing the card was ok before I started. Erasing went fine but flashing anything new on to the card only gives errors:

Executing Operation: Flash Firmware Image
Firmware Image has a Valid Checksum.
Firmware Image compatible with Controller.
Valid NVDATA Image found.
NVDATA Device ID and Chip Revision match verified.
Valid Initialization Image verified.
Valid BootLoader Image verified.
Chip is in RESET state. Attempting Host Boot..
ERROR: Firmware Host Boot Failed !
Due to errir remaining commands will not be executed.
Unable to Process Commands.
Exiting SAS2Flash

I have tried flashing with different versions of sas2flash, all the different versions of firmwares from supermicro. Non of the programs can get the card to boot to accept a new image.

Trying to list the card now only starts the process of uploading a new image and boot the card. This also fails with host boot failed. Unable to flash the card with a DOS boot disk as there is know bugs preventing the flash programs to run on this platform.

Any ideas?
 

marbus90

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As I just stumbled upon the Supermicro listing: AOC-S2308L-L8e and AOC-S2308L-L8i, where L8e designates the HBA mode from factory and L8i the RAID mode, are cards comparable to LSI 9207-8i controllers and listed for about 30-35% less than said LSI cards.

Following cards are SAS2008 based (same as 9211-8i and probably M1015)
AOC-USAS2-L8i
AOC-USAS2-L8iR
AOC-USAS2-L8E

With the difference being the RAID-capable firmware from factory as well.
 

ron_swanson

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Some heads up that will probably net the forum some hits from google. I don't know how much this applies to freenas from freebsd.

After bricking my integrated card I liberated a SAS3801E based HP card from the scrap heap. This card is meant for MSA connections so it is already flashed with IT and it lacks battery power. This makes the device disable the write cache of all attached drives. There is a camcontroll command to enable it.

# To get the device IDs
camcontrol devlist -v
<ATA HDS722020ALA330 A31E> at scbus0 target 1 lun 0 (da0,pass0)

# Now me send a mode page to the device.
camcontrol modepage 0:1:0 -m 0x08 -e

Now an editor opens, probably vi. A single row with "WCE: 0" will display. Use the arrow keys to move to the 0 and press r and 1. Now do ":rw" to save.

#Check with camcontroll.
camcontrol identify da0 | grep "write cache"

The output should now be:

write cache yes yes

Performance goes from 2mibps to 25mibps per device, repeat for each device on the card. This most probably won't persist over reboots. Please move or erase this post if you feel it doesn't fit here.
 

Ed Clarke

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I have an LSI 9200-8e installed and working on FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201504152200 but the firmware is
seriously out of date. I am getting an alert:

WARNING: Firmware version 7 does not match driver version 16 for /dev/mps0

Does anyone have version 16 firmware for the 9200-8e? The earliest that I can find on the LSI site is version
19. Version 20 is current.
 

jgreco

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I am reasonably sure that that is the external version of the 9211–8i. Check to see if it is based on the LSI 2008. If so, you may flash it with the P16 firmware using the same method as any of the other 2008 based controllers. You can either dig around on the LSI website to find the archived version of the firmware, or just use the version that is supplied for other controllers like the M1015.
 

cyberjock

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I have an LSI 9200-8e installed and working on FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201504152200 but the firmware is
seriously out of date. I am getting an alert:

WARNING: Firmware version 7 does not match driver version 16 for /dev/mps0

Does anyone have version 16 firmware for the 9200-8e? The earliest that I can find on the LSI site is version
19. Version 20 is current.

It's there. Gotta look at the archived downloads though.
 

Ed Clarke

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Jul 22, 2014
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It's there. Gotta look at the archived downloads though.
Awwww Geeeeezzzzz...

I looked in the 9211-8i archives but not in the 9200-8e archives. The file is indeed there as:

9200_8e_Package_P16_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows.zip

Get 9200-8e.bin and mptsas2.rom from the zip file and use sas2flash to install. Works fine.

sas2flash -o -f 9200-8e.bin -b mptsas2.rom

No more alert for a mismatched firmware version.
 

pclausen

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Apr 19, 2015
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I have 3 of these IBM 1015 cards, each dual linked to a Supermicro SAS2 backplane in 846 chassis. I know the 1015s have a J3 connector labeled Ext LED. According to the LSI manual, this is for connecting activity and fault LEDs. But it does not appear to be an I2C connector that I can wire to the PRI_I2C connector on the Supermicro backplane, or is it? The silk screen on the 1015 by the J3 connector appears to show that this is nothing more than 2 +/- connectors to wire directly to LEDs and not a I2C outofband data bus.

My blue activity LEDs are working fine, but the red fault LEDs only lit up briefly when powering up the 846 chassis and not when a drive fails.

Is there a way to get the 1015 talking to the red fault LEDs on the Supermicro backplane?
 

Ericloewe

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I have 3 of these IBM 1015 cards, each dual linked to a Supermicro SAS2 backplane in 846 chassis. I know the 1015s have a J3 connector labeled Ext LED. According to the LSI manual, this is for connecting activity and fault LEDs. But it does not appear to be an I2C connector that I can wire to the PRI_I2C connector on the Supermicro backplane, or is it? The silk screen on the 1015 by the J3 connector appears to show that this is nothing more than 2 +/- connectors to wire directly to LEDs and not a I2C outofband data bus.

My blue activity LEDs are working fine, but the red fault LEDs only lit up briefly when powering up the 846 chassis and not when a drive fails.

Is there a way to get the 1015 talking to the red fault LEDs on the Supermicro backplane?

The signals themselves are carried by SFF-8078 to SFF-8087 cables. What's missing is software support.
 

pclausen

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Ok I see. So where in the chain is the software missing?

FreeNAS
|
LSI Driver
|
LSI Firmware
|
Backplane Firmware
 
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